Back to School, Dancing to the Beat

[Guest post by Lauren]

The morning was surprisingly cool—after less than a week here, we’ve already take for granted that the days will be sunny and hot, often forgetting that it’s winter. We piled out of the kombie and filed into the preschool’s yard to wait for the kids to line up for assembly. With permission from a teacher, we wandered through the classrooms in the grade school buildings, hugging the kids we recognized (and a few we didn’t) before going back to the yard to lead song and Bible story time.

After a bit, the kids finished lining up in the yard, organized by class: the tiniest preschoolers, who barely speak English, on one end, and the grade six students on the other. Mike strummed a chord on his guitar, launching us into “Every Move I Make,” motions and all.

In roughly twenty minutes, we led four fun songs with motions and delivered a dramatic (or as Parker enthusiastically described it, “corny,”) reenactment of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. Despite our questionable historical accuracy, we earned giggles from the kids and had fun pretending to be golden statues, deadly fires, and royal sovereigns. From there we scattered to our various projects for the week: Jes and Jill to classroom shadowing; Parker, Brook, Morgan, and Meghan to the preschool classrooms to assist the teachers; Mike to blog posting and teaching a Bible lesson; Linda to sort donated clothing; and Fred, Katie, and I to do fence repair and repainting.

Our time in Namibia has both moved slowly, ambling from projects to soda/ice cream/bread runs to soccer with the kids, and very fast, powering through our short time in Arandis. Post-dinner debriefs have ensured bonding on our team and simply paying attention to them has ensured the love of both the majority of the town’s kids and the neighbor’s big dog. In so many ways, two weeks feels too short a time to spend in this place.

Personally, I know I wish for more time to develop the growing friendships and work on more projects. My current project is repainting the fences and accent trim on a couple of houses in town—a project that suits me better than keeping track of twenty-plus three-and-four-year-olds. But when I am not there, I am with the pastor’s daughter, Pearl. She leads dance classes for a range of ages, from preschool to high school aged kids. Jes and I have gone to har classes almost every day, helping with warm up, teaching a few simple ballet movements, and enjoying Pearl’s company. She does not have the formal ballet training that Jes and I both do, but she moves with a beautiful, flowing rhythm and dedicated sense of worship in dance that puts me in awe every time I see her move. She teaches her kids with a sweet gentleness that they all love. She really is a special woman of God.

This coming Friday, Pearl will host an “open stage night” and, on impulse, I suggested that she join Jes and me in a special dance that we would make up ourselves. So since Saturday, Jes and I have been giving crash courses in ballet and developing our own strange mixture of choreography. So far I am excited by what we have developed. Two former ballet dancers years removed from their training and an African dancer with no classical background make a unique set of partners—and I love all of it.

I can’t tell you yet what Africa has been teaching me. Nor could I tell you if the sand has “gotten in my blood.” All I know is that we all—our whole team—were brought here by God. Thank you so much for your continued prayers. We all love to hear your comments after you’ve read a blog post (one of the highlights of evening debrief!), so again, thank you for everything.